Unsubscribes Are Not a Failure

The number in red

The report for this month's newsletter arrives: opens, clicks, and at the bottom a line reading unsubscribed, with a small number beside it, often in red.

For many owners that line stings more than everything else in the report. Somebody saw the email and chose to leave.

It is usually the least worrying number there. Many of the people leaving had stopped reading long ago; the link only made it official.

What would be worrying is if they could not leave at all.

Who unsubscribes

• People who joined for one thing, a contest or a discount code.
• Customers whose need has passed, such as a finished renovation.
• People who moved away from the area you serve.
• Readers trimming their inbox, from every sender at once.
• People who never meant to join, signed up by a box ticked for them.
• Some loyal customers, who will keep buying and simply want fewer emails.

The first is often the largest group on a list that grew through promotions. They joined for the prize, and every email since has been about something else.

What CASL requires

Under Canada's anti-spam law, every commercial email must include a way to unsubscribe that is simple and quick to use and costs the recipient nothing.

The link has to keep working for at least 60 days after the email is sent, and a request has to be acted on without delay, and in any case within ten business days.

Mailing services handle this automatically. The risk lies elsewhere: emails sent from Outlook to a group of contacts, lists copied from one tool to another, and replies asking to be removed that nobody reads.

What the link protects

Somebody who cannot find the unsubscribe link has one other button: report as spam.

Spam reports weigh heavily with the email providers deciding where your next newsletter lands. Enough of them and your messages drift into junk folders for everybody on the list, including the customers who wanted them.

Gmail and some other providers show an unsubscribe option at the top of newsletters that support it, beside the sender's name. Somebody who uses it leaves quietly. Somebody who cannot find it complains.

So an easy unsubscribe is not a courtesy that costs you readers. It is what keeps the remaining readers' inboxes open to you.

What a normal rate looks like

Mailing services publish averages, often by industry, and they generally sit well under one percent of a list per send.

Your own history is a better guide. Note the rate for each send over six months, and you will see what normal looks like for your list, your frequency and your customers.

The first send to a list that has not heard from you in a long time will lose more than usual. So will the first email after a change in frequency or subject. That is the list sorting itself out.

Small lists swing. On a list of a few hundred, a handful of departures looks like a jump and means very little.

When it does mean something

A rate that jumps after one particular email says something about that email: the subject, the offer, the tone, or a mistake in who it went to.

A rate that climbs steadily over several sends usually means the frequency or the content has drifted from what people signed up for.

If your service asks people why they left, read the answers. Too many emails and not relevant can be fixed. I never signed up is a consent problem, which matters far more under CASL than any unsubscribe.

And spam reports matter more than unsubscribes. A rising complaint rate needs attention this week, not next quarter.

A worked example

An independent outdoor gear store in Squamish sends a monthly newsletter to customers who join at the till or through its website.

In the spring it switched to weekly emails during a sale, and the second weekly send lost several times its usual number of subscribers. The owner nearly stopped the newsletter altogether.

Most of those who left had joined during a contest three years earlier and had opened nothing since.

The review turned up something more serious. A few people who had unsubscribed were receiving the newsletter again, because the store's sales system copied every customer with an email address into the mailing list each night.

The store went back to monthly, added an option for sale alerts only, and changed the nightly copy so it adds only customers who agreed at the till and never adds back anybody who has left.

Choices instead of a door

Many people leave because the emails are too frequent, not because they want nothing. An unsubscribe page offering a monthly digest or sale alerts only keeps some of them.

Leaving altogether must remain one of the choices, plainly, and one click away.

Do not ask people to log in, type their address again or explain themselves. A short optional question about why is fine.

And do not follow up with an email pleading with them to stay. A confirmation on the page is enough.

Unsubscribes that never reach the list

The legal risk is rarely the link in the newsletter. It is everywhere else.

Replies saying please take me off, sent to an inbox nobody reads. A no-reply address that bounces those replies. A store, booking system or loyalty program that keeps emailing people who left the newsletter.

Keep one list of everybody who has unsubscribed, used by every tool that sends commercial email; mailing services call it a suppression list. Check it before importing any list, so nobody who left is quietly added back.

The counter-case

A rising rate can be a real problem, and treating every departure as healthy would miss it. The signals are a jump after one email, a steady climb, complaints, and people saying they never signed up.

Very small lists also make any single rate hard to read, so look at several sends together.

But a steady trickle of people leaving through a link that works is the list doing its job, within the law, and protecting delivery to everybody who stays.

Before the next send

1. Click your own unsubscribe link and time it.
2. Note the rate for the last six sends.
3. Read the reasons people gave for leaving.
4. Check that every tool respects unsubscribes.
5. Answer removal requests sent by reply.
6. Offer fewer emails alongside leaving altogether.
7. Watch spam complaints more closely than unsubscribes.

Step four is the one with legal weight. A newsletter tool that honours every unsubscribe is little protection if the store, the booking system or a nightly import keeps adding the same people back.

Getting the right people onto the list in the first place is covered in the newsletter sign-up hidden in the footer.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.